New Immunotherapy Yields Long-Lasting Responses in Some Patients with Advanced Melanoma

Medical Xpress | Apr 20, 2015

“A first-in-class immunotherapy called IMCgp100 yielded durable responses in patients with advanced cutaneous melanoma and those with advanced ocular melanoma, according to data from a phase I/IIa clinical trial presented here at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015, April 18-22.

” ‘IMCgp100 is a new type of immunotherapy that has two functional ends,’ said Mark R. Middleton, MD, PhD, professor of experimental cancer medicine at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ‘The targeting end attaches to melanoma cells and the effector end locks on to any neighboring killer T cell [a type of immune cell], resulting in directed destruction of the tumor. One can think of IMCgp100 as a molecular bridge connecting melanoma cells with killer T cells, encouraging the killer T cells to destroy the melanoma cells.

” ‘Last year at the AACR Annual Meeting, we reported the results of the phase I dose-escalation portion of the clinical trial, which showed that IMCgp100 was well tolerated and had efficacy in some patients with advanced melanoma,’ continued Middleton. ‘This year, we are reporting data from 17 patients treated with the maximum tolerated dose of 600 nanograms of IMCgp100 per kilogram or an absolute dose of 50 micrograms of IMCgp100 as part of the phase I and phase IIa portions of the trial.’ “